Open Financial Exchange
| Filename extension | .ofx |
|---|---|
| Developed by | Microsoft, Intuit and CheckFree |
| Initial release | February 14, 1997 |
| Latest release |
2.2
|
| Container for | Financial information |
| Extended from | SGML, XML, OFC |
| Extended to | QFX |
Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is a data-stream format for exchanging financial information that evolved from Microsoft's Open Financial Connectivity (OFC) and Intuit's Open Exchange file formats.
Microsoft, Intuit and CheckFree announced the OFX standard on 16 January 1997. The first OFX specification, version 1.0, was released on 14 February 1997. The specification allows for bank- and application-specific extensions, although only a subset is necessary to describe a financial transaction.
Versions 1.0 through 1.6 relied on SGML for data exchange, but later versions are XML based. According to the main OFX site, "The specification is freely licensed, allowing any software developer to design an interface that will be supported on the front-end."
Many banks in the US let customers use personal financial management software to automatically download their bank statements in OFX format, but most Canadian, United Kingdom and Australian (CBA exports OFX and QIF files) banks do not allow this.
QFX is a proprietary variant of OFX used in Intuit's products. In the Intuit Products, OFX is used for Direct Connect and QFX for Web Connect. Direct Connect allows personal financial management software to connect directly to a bank OFX server, whereas in Web Connect, the user needs to log in and manually download a .qfx file and import it into Quicken.
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